A few months ago I wrote a post, found here, about why appellants need to be bold in writing an appeal brief. Simply put, most appellants lose, and that trend is growing, at least in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. According to data I recently found from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, in the Eleventh Circuit in 2001, only 10.1% of  all appellate matters ended in reversals. While that number included both civil and criminal appeals, and the percentage for criminal appeals is likely very low and thus weighs down that for civil appeals, what’s important here is not just the low percentage but also the trend. In 2006, the percentage of reversals decreased to 9.1% and further decreased to…